


My Soul Not

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Happy Ending, M/M, Romance, Shadows - Freeform, Tom possessed people so he can be near Harry, Vietnamese Translation Available, brief descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 00:45:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19121131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: The pieces of Tom Riddle’s soul follow Harry, even after Voldemort has long died. Harry would like Tom to stop possessing the people around him just to chat to Harry.For an anon on tumblr who wanted 10 moments of Tomarry.





	My Soul Not

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Tiếng Việt available: [My Soul Not](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19234792) by [Jellyfish (DandelionAdrian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DandelionAdrian/pseuds/Jellyfish)



**1 - Not a Train Station**

 

Another Harry makes the choice to leave the mutilated horcrux babe at the afterlife's King's Cross. That Harry goes on to fill the void in his heart with his idealized idea of family. That Harry never looks back or dares to linger on the hollow fog that follows him since.

This Harry stares down at the little horcrux, so small and withered, barely any skin to cry with, huddling for warmth, and remembers a time where he did the same thing in a dusty little cupboard.

“...What will happen to him?”

Dumbledore only shrugs. “I imagine that no train will open its doors for him.”

“So he’ll just… stay here?” Cast off. Cold. Alone. Afraid. Will this horcrux even grow without any soul to sustain him? Or will he remain as a helpless babe, unable to cry, to move, to talk? Forever under a bench, watching footsteps walk past?

Slowly, his hand stretches out...

A soft chuckle interrupts his thoughts. “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, who know not what waits for them here.”

Harry snaps his hand back. “Why can’t I do both? The dead were alive once, weren’t they?”

“But can a horcrux truly be called a living being?”

He flinches, hand falling back by his side. The little horcrux gives another gasping sound, as if trying to remember how to breathe. A pang echoes in Harry’s scar, like a hollowness, an echo of how dementors made him feel in third year…

“I don’t know, but… I know he was a part of me. So maybe that part of him was alive, in a way.”

Crouching down, Harry hesitates but brushes his hand against the horcrux’s withered cheek. The little babe feels like worn wood, rotting and waiting, but still warm. For a moment, Harry’s scar stops aching.

“...I’m sorry,” Harry whispers. “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

His hand lingers, though he’s not sure why, and finally, Harry leaves Kings Cross.

He doesn’t notice the horcrux’s little arms slowly unfurl and reach back.

 

**2 - Not this Hollow**

 

The first dream Harry has after the Battle of Hogwarts is cold and empty. Nothing but wisps of shadows in an endless stone corridor. Harry almost believes that he’s walking in reality, a reality where Voldemort won and Harry wanders forever in between lives, the curse of being made into a horcrux.

Instead, something tugs at Harry’s chest. His scar aches again, the way he feels when he’s terribly thirsty or starved at the Dursleys. He needs something--but what?

Harry’s footsteps echo and echo. He doesn’t know how long he walks, but he feels the walls of the corridor closing in, stifling him, becoming as small as his cupboard until--

A curled up figure appears from the shadows. As small and frail as Harry remembers himself being before Hogwarts. The figure, no the boy, looks too familiar… dark hair…

He reaches out.

"Help me."

He's not sure who says it. Him. Or the boy. Or both of them.

"I've found you," a voice says, wrapping shadows around Harry and the boy. The voice feels like the safety of dark cloaking him from the Dursleys, the comfort of Hogwarts nights, the whispers of spells he would practice so the Dursleys wouldn't wake. The voice feels like something settling into his scar, hissing in delight as it fits in all the right places.

It holds him close against its chest, against the shadows, until the boy disappears and all that's left is Harry and this hollow-not-hollow Dark.

"Sleep," it croons. "I will be with you."

 _I won't leave again,_ something unsaid whispers.

It shouldn't comfort him. The Dark. The shadows. And yet…

Harry leans in closer, all thoughts of war gone, and sleeps.

 

**3 - Not a Ghost**

 

The summer is strange. Harry has nowhere to go. Well. No biological family to go to.

He feels like a ghost when he visits the Weasleys, so guilty and unsure of how much to comfort them over Fred. He thinks he hears Fred's voice, along with Remus and Tonks, in his dreams sometimes but the shadows chase them away. He feels like a visitor to a mortuary when he wanders the old Black house with Kreacher. He doesn't remember how he fit together with Ginny or if he even still can, and… part of him doesn't want to anymore. They drift apart, never put back together.

Though Sirius willed this house to him, Harry still feels like a stranger. He's grateful to Kreacher for making the kitchen and his bedroom more homey but contemplates finding a place of his own after he finishes school…

School…

Being at Hogwarts feels like being on stage, playing the role of student and pretending to be happy because if he's not happy, he'll demoralize the young ones and the press and--

"You should eat something." It's Smith again. His eyes are crimson red.

Harry turns around. "Stop following me."

"Now that's rude."

"Then stop possessing people I know!"

Not-Smith puts his hand against his chest in false hurt. "Like I told you before, Harry, I've seen the error of my ways and I wish to be friends now. You're not seeing people with red eyes again, are you? Perhaps we should go to the hospital wing!"

"That's not funny."

Not-Smith closes his eyes, then opens them, eyes brown again. Smith staggers, gives Harry an affronted look, then whips away, muttering about weird headaches.

"I think it's _very_ funny," another voice, Not-Zabini this time, with red eyes, says by Harry's ear. "You can't prove to people that I'm here."

Harry grits his teeth. He knows. No one notices the red eyes that appear when they're possessed by Tom Riddle. No one but Harry can see that possessed person with the shadow image of an older Tom Riddle hovering on top.

"Just leave me alone."

Not-Zambini leans close. "Oh Harry, you know I can't."

 

**4 - Not this Evil**

 

The first time Harry saw the pieces of Tom Riddle's soul attached to someone he knew, he freaks out. Panics. He nearly calls Hermione until the red eyes and the image of Tom vanish from Ron and he thinks it must be a dream.

But it keeps happening. Again and again. Tom stays for longer too, again and again.

Tom could do anything, if he has this power: manipulate elections, murder Order members, turn Harry's friends against him. Instead he just… watches. Lingers. His red eyes watch Harry intensely.

"What's your plan? What do you _want?_ " Harry bursts one day, his hands pass through Tom Riddle's shadow, nearly landing on a poor red-eyed Kreacher. "There are no more horcruxes. And if _I'm_ still a horcrux then I'll die before I let you come back. You can't hurt anyone!"

And truly, Harry believes that Tom can't. Because if he could, wouldn't he have used Ron's body to kill Harry the first possession he'd performed? Wouldn't that have been the best revenge?

" _You're not allowed to say that,_ " Tom's shadow hisses both through the dark and through Kreacher's lips. " _You're not allowed to die._ "

"I will if you use me to hurt them." If he's still a horcrux or if he's just crazy.

Tom's shadow gives a bemused smile.

" _Would you believe me if I said I just want_ you?"

Shivers tiptoe down Harry's spine.

"You can't possess me." Harry's set up surveillance when he sleeps. He has no gaps in his memory. Tom hasn't possessed him. Or can't.

Those eyes gleam so red and dark.

" _Not in the way you think._ "

 

**5 - Not this Kind**

 

Months go by. Harry graduates. Tom's shadow lingers, never acting except to give food or make Harry sleep. He never lingers in a possessed body for longer than an hour, like a fish flitting about from pond to pond. Perhaps Harry's living in a dream. Perhaps he died in the forbidden forest.

He stops questioning it. Tom's always there, even if no one notices. Perhaps Harry has gone mad after all.

Then he's attacked in Diagon Alley by death eater sympathizers, caught off guard in an ambush of five people. His wand flies from his hands, his face falls against gravel, shoes crush his limbs further into the ground.

"We'll finish what the Dark Lord started," one of them swears.

It's the last thing they ever do.

Harry hears bones breaking. Then the screaming starts, along with bright red lights and torrents of blood falling.

When he manages to turn around he sees that four of the ambushers are dead, limbs torn apart by gruesome slashing hexes, and one ambusher stands before him with cold red eyes.

Harry stills, caught up in Tom Riddle's gaze.

Then the fifth ambusher kills himself, after sending up red sparks. Then Tom's shadow lingers all around Harry, as trying to soak himself into his scar.

Neither of them speak when the mediwizards and aurors appear.

 

**6 - Not Mercy**

 

"...You killed them," Harry whispers in the dark of Grimmauld place, where Sirius slowly died of loneliness.

"Yes," says Tom Riddle's shadow.

"...I didn't think you could do that." Didn't think Tom's shadow could hurt anyone or use their magic or…

"They deserved it." Those eyes flash as deadly as fire. "And more. So much more…"

"They deserved a trial--"

"And they _touched_ you." That voice and those eyes feel so much closer, breath snarling just by Harry's lips. "You have _no idea_ how much restraint I have, not to kill everyone who touches you. I want to rip them apart. Your Weasleys, Granger, your house elf… But those _scum_ crossed a line. They _hurt_ you. Made you _low_. For all those years that I couldn't before, yes, I _hurt_ them."

Harry's heart hammers like a jolted rabbit trying to escape his rib cage. He can't think, can't process…

"You…"

Something ghosts across Harry's cheek. Like a caress.

"You might think me a monster. I don't care. Those who hurt you don't deserve my facade of mercy."

Then the touch disappears, the shadows back away (but never leaving.)

 

**7 - Not Monstrous**

 

Harry is not lonely, not cold, not empty, when he doesn't feel Tom Riddle's Shadow in his room. (Of course, the shadow never leaves, it hovers at the door, watching. But not as close as before.)

He does not crave that caress.

So he begins searching through the Black library for any cases like his… Hauntings, possessions, strange soul bonds… Anything to get rid of Tom.

"Is this really what you want?"

Harry doesn't look up from his tomes. "I can't let you hurt people."

"So _you're_ to be hurt instead?" Tom snarls. "Like a lamb to slaughter? The way Dumbledore raised you?"

The shadows grow.

Harry doesn't dare look.

"If it comes to that, yes."

"Then I'll kill them all. _ALL_ who touch you! This attitude of yours, this desire to die--shut up you can't say otherwise when you once walked to your death--is the reason Voldemort killed you, the reason we were separated, the reason I can't shield your dreams any longer and you…! _You…!_ "

Harry nearly drops the tome on his feet, just as the shadows crawl inward back to Tom.

"...You… you were the horcrux in my scar…" The one at the train station.

Tom only chuckles slowly, each laugh like a twisting of a knife.

"And if I was?"

"I don't understand… Then you're here because… because you _don't_ want me dead? But you're Voldemort. You tried to kill me! You…!"

"Do you have any idea," Tom says slowly, stepping closer, shadows inching to touch Harry's skin, "what it's like to have your soul ripped apart?"

Harry goes silent.

"It hurts the more horcruxes you make. The original soul feels nothing at all. But for the pieces he abandoned to _rot_ in little objects, that pain is all we feel. Until you."

The shadows fade out softly, making Tom look more like the pearly ghosts at Hogwarts. He's the soft glow of moonlight and the way he looks at Harry makes Harry too warm…

"I slept in your soul and it nourished me. I could have devoured it whole and yet I delighted in your laughter, I raged at your hurts, I grieved with you, and I felt all these delicious things like never before. You're vibrant. Addicting. How could I devour you, knowing that I would never feel that again?"

Harry feels a hush, a reverent awe that he knows not the language for, settle in his veins.

"...So you slept…"

Tom smiles at him. "So I slept."

"And then I died and…" _you were gone._

The room grows darker again. "You died and I was ripped from you, resigned to exist in-between for eternity… until you reached back for me."

Harry's mouth grows dry. "I didn't…" _he didn't mean for Tom to come back._ "It was pity." And didn't Dumbledore say once that Voldemort hated that? Pity?

"It doesn't matter. It was enough. You needed me, just for that moment, and I won't let go again."

The shadows wrap themselves around Harry and Tom once more, close and confining as a lonely child's embrace.

 

**8 - Not Soulled**

 

"Don't you want to live again? Aren't you still a horcrux?" Harry whispers as Tom's shadow lazily caresses him under the sheets.

" _He_ shares my soul no more." Tom's smile could be made of knives and claws. "I ripped his scrap of a soul apart for you."

 _After all,_ Tom's kiss answers, _he killed you._

(And Harry hates that that comforts him.)

 

**9 - Not Alive**

 

The tomes on exorcisms are put away one night, locked tight. Harry stops tensing when Tom possesses random strangers to guard him, he stops worrying if Tom will hurt his friends or random strangers on the street.

It's when he realizes that he always leans into the dark for comfort, that he wonders what it would be like to reach out and hold Tom's hand (a real hand, not borrowed or shadow), that he loves him.

In true Harry Potter fashion, when he realizes this, he spits out his drink on Hermione.

"Iamsosorry," he cleans up the mess with a spell. "I wasn't thinking, I was distracted and--"

"Obviously distracted." Hermione fights back a smile. "Do you want to talk about it?"

No, he thinks.

"I'm in love with someone," he blurts out instead.

The shadows around him shake.

"Well, that's obvious too. You do seem happier lately, Harry. Not as lost."

"...I do?"

Hermione rolls her eyes. "Yes, and you stare off into the distance quite often, looking terribly besotted. You must bring her over to meet us."

"Him," Harry finds himself saying, despite the panic running amok in his head. "His… his name is Tom."

The shadows freeze in place.

"Him then," Hermione shrugs. "Bring him over and we can judge if he's good enough for you."

 _I'm not sure,_ he doesn't say.

When Hermione leaves Grimmauld place, Tom manifests. Frankly, Harry's surprised Tom didn't possess Hermione right there to demand answers. The room's temperature chills…

"...You love me?"

Harry clenches his fists but does not look away. "Does that matter?"

What does it matter if Harry loves him when Harry's not even certain if Tom can love him back?

The room becomes ice cold.

"You shouldn't."

Harry nearly falls over. "Excuse me?"

"You shouldn't love me," Tom's shadow repeats. "I'll devour you."

"Then devour me," Harry snaps because who told Tom to hold the moral ground here, "I know you won't hurt me."

"I'm dead. Forgotten. A parasite. I can't hold you."

Oh for...! Of all the times for Tom to be _stubborn!_

"Then I'll make you a body, one made of clay instead of the dark arts. I'll make you a new one every day, even if it crumples."

"I'm cold."

"I'm warm enough for the both of us."

"I'll possess you," comes the last strained whisper.

Harry steps closer so they are nose to nose. He thinks of moments of comfort from the shadows in his cupboard, as if the dark wanted to hold him close. He remembers times when his nightmares were stamped away by the dark. He remembers the feeling of wholeness from his scar. He knows how Tom’s red eyes look at him every day.

"But I already possess _you,_ don't I?"

_You love me, don't you?_

(Please.)

“Yes,” Tom yanks him forward, covering him in shadows, pressing their lips together in hunger. “Yes, forever, yes.”

Because isn’t that the only way Tom Riddle knows how to love?

 

**10 - Not Ended**

 

They create a clay body for Tom that won’t fall apart for at least a decade. They create a face with inspired features from attractive models in different magazines because, of course, Tom is vain. They create a new persona for Tom, a backstory of a wizard lost in Bulgaria for years before he wandered back to England.

Thomas Night. His Night. His Tom.

Tom creates a scar on the clay body’s face, a few lines of scratches on his forehead.

“Because I marked you,” he whispers, lips pressed against Harry’s scar, “and you’ve marked me.”

“Yes,” Harry whispers, letting himself slip into the dark.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Always happy to get prompts at my [twitter](https://twitter.com/youlightthesky1), my [writing tumblr](http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/), or my [art tumblr](https://youlighttheskyart.tumblr.com/)


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